On the quieter side of Little Garden, where the trees hummed in prehistoric tones and even the wind carried the scent of ancient moss, Hinata was frowning. Not her usual gentle, oh-I'm-sorry-I-breathed-wrong kind of frown, but a focused one.
She stood across from Neji, her cousin, her mentor, her very intimidatingly calm big brother figure, and currently, her therapist.
"I just don't know what I'm doing wrong," she admitted quietly. "Everyone's getting stronger in their own way. Naruto… Tenten… Even Kiba figured something out, and he once tried to eat glue thinking it was chakra paste."
Neji arched a single elegant brow. "You're comparing yourself to Kiba?"
"…Fair."
She crossed her arms, trying not to feel the usual sting of inadequacy. The truth was, things were changing. Fast. The enemies were different. The rules were shifting. No chakra network to shut down, no easy wins with palm strikes. Just raw blood, speed, instinct… and Hinata wasn't sure if she was built for that world.
"Hyuga techniques are precise," Neji said calmly. "We don't throw punches—we redirect the essence of a person's body against them. Without chakra networks, that essence becomes… something more primal. Blood. Organs. Nerve clusters."
He tapped a point on the tree behind him. A single leaf fell. "It will be messier. But that's what evolution demands."
"Messier?" she blinked.
"I mean, viscerally messier."
"…Ew."
Neji gave her a rare smirk. "This isn't a graceful art anymore. We're learning how to weaponize our strikes against blood vessels. Block circulation. Force ruptures. Internal chaos. We won't need to be faster than everyone. We just need one good hit."
Hinata nodded slowly, absorbing that.
"But still," she added, biting her lip, "a good hit requires getting there. These guys are too fast. I can't match that with just chakra control."
Neji's smirk deepened. For a moment, he looked like someone who had been waiting for this question for years.
"Isn't it obvious?" he said. "It's time for lightning."
He lifted his hand. Sparks crackled to life around his fingertips. Electricity danced around his legs like a living creature.
Hinata's eyes widened.
"You've been holding back."
"I've been preparing," Neji corrected. "Even Lee hasn't shown me his sixth gate. But I've trained my lightning step for months. I wanted to make sure it worked before showing anyone."
Then he vanished.
Zzt!
A bolt of light tore through the jungle. Leaves exploded into the air. A bird shrieked. A dinosaur fell over somewhere in the distance.
And Neji reappeared beside her, not a hair out of place.
Hinata's jaw dropped. "You—how—when—?"
"It's not full-body speed. It's leg-based lightning enhancement. You use chakra to coat your nerves, stimulate your reaction time, and move in bursts too fast for the eye to catch. Think of it as… nervous system nitro."
"I can learn that?"
"You will learn that," he said, serious now. "It's the only way forward. Fast feet. Precise strikes. And bloodstopping palms."
He turned to face the jungle, where growls echoed from somewhere in the mist. "We'll practice on the monsters here. The stronger ones. The kind that'll kill you if you hesitate. That's the level you need to reach."
Hinata took a breath. Then she activated her Byakugan. Her eyes flared, veins bulging. She was terrified.
But ready.
---------------------
The jungle screamed.
Birds, dinosaurs, insects—everything shrieked like the entire ecosystem had been set on fire. But nothing screamed louder than the raptors caught in Hinata's new training path.
Or Hinata herself.
"Ahhh!!"
She slammed her palm into the side of a lunging dinosaur's ribcage, her chakra surging through her fingers. The beast roared—then choked. A vein in its throat bulged. Its eyes rolled. It stumbled two steps and collapsed, twitching as its arteries ruptured from inside.
"I'm so sorry!" Hinata yelled, cringing… but also ready for the next one.
Another beast—a bulky thing with teeth like kitchen knives—leapt from the undergrowth. She spun, ducked, and struck under its jaw.
POP!
Blood spurted from its ears like someone had opened a shaken soda can. It let out a horrifying screech, flailed… and fell.
Hinata gagged.
"Why is this so… wet?!"
She'd always imagined her chakra strikes as clean. Surgical. Controlled. But this? This was a gorefest. Like she'd been dropped into a horror movie directed by her sister Hanabi's repressed rage.
One dinosaur tried to flank her. She turned—Byakugan flaring—and jabbed its hind leg. Arterial chakra blocked. The beast staggered three steps, then exploded from internal pressure like an overcooked sausage.
"Okay, nope! No more leg shots!" she gasped, covered in… things.
Blood matted her sleeves. Her sandals squelched. Something unspeakable clung to her cheek.
Neji had warned her it would be messy. But this?
This was a butcher shop.
Another raptor lunged. She tried the stomach.
Bad idea.
It thrashed and howled, tail flailing, claws tearing through branches. It didn't die clean—it spasmed for fifteen seconds, suffering in terrifying ways before keeling over with blood pouring from every orifice.
Hinata stared, shaking. "I can't do this…"
Another came.
She ducked. Flipped. Struck.
"SPINE," she shouted. "JUST—SPINE!"
Her palm landed directly on the raptor's lower back. Chakra surged like a lightning rod—straight through its spine, severing the neural connection. The body froze mid-air and crashed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
It didn't bleed. It didn't twitch. It just stopped.
Silence.
Then Hinata blinked. "That… was clean."
Another came. She moved. Byakugan guided her palm to the base of the skull.
SNAP.
It dropped.
Another. She struck higher, between the shoulder blades.
THUNK.
It collapsed.
She exhaled hard, lowering her stance. The smell of blood hung heavy in the air, but the ground was finally still. Jungle leaves rustled nervously above her, like even the trees were wary now.
Hinata wiped her face with a trembling hand. Her skin was sticky, her breath ragged—but her eyes? Focused.
Spine shots. Neural shutdown. It wasn't the most honorable method.
But it was effective. Fast. And merciful.
"Neji-niisan was right," she muttered, more to herself than anyone. "This world… doesn't need gentle fists anymore."
A soft crack of electricity arced between her fingers as she raised her hand again.
"From now on… it's lightning nerves and death palms."
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When Hinata returned to the training clearing, she looked like a blood-soaked survivor from a myth. Leaves clung to her tangled hair, her clothes were smeared in dinosaur guts, and her eyes—those usually soft, hesitant eyes—now held the calm sharpness of a veteran assassin.
Neji stood atop a branch, arms folded like some jungle guardian spirit. He'd been watching. The jungle had gone quiet around them—out of respect, maybe… or fear.
Hinata looked up. "Neji-niisan…"
He didn't speak at first. Just stared. Then, slowly, solemnly… he reached up and wiped the corner of his eye.
"An imaginary tear," he said. "Of pride."
Hinata blinked. "Imaginary?"
"Of course. I'm Hyuga. We don't cry. We leak excellence."
Hinata laughed for the first time that day, a weird, relieved snort that escaped her before she could stop it. "You're ridiculous."
Neji jumped down with effortless grace, landing beside her without a sound. He glanced at her soaked sleeves, her trembling fingers, the quiet resolve in her face.
"You used the spine?" he asked.
"Yeah. Everything else was… messy."
He nodded approvingly. "Very messy. There was a stegosaurus back there twitching like a broken music box."
Hinata flushed. "I didn't know its circulatory system would react like that!"
"You adapted. You chose precision over power. Control over chaos. That's what it means to grow. And…" He gave her a rare, genuine smile. "You're already beyond what I expected."
"Really?"
"Honestly? I thought you'd pass out after the first exploding raptor."
"…I almost did."
They stood in silence, the jungle breeze carrying away the iron scent of battle.
"Let's keep going," Neji said at last. "We'll refine your lightning step next. But from now on, Hinata—"
He gave her a sharp glance.
"—no more apologizing to the dinosaurs."
Hinata nodded solemnly.
"Even if they look at me with sad eyes?"
"Especially if they look at you with sad eyes."
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On any normal day, you'd expect the sight of a grown man pulling a ship through a jungle river while doing handstand push-ups to be a hallucination.
But no. This was Gai-sensei.
And behind him, trailing like a very enthusiastic boulder chained to a mountain lion, was Rock Lee, carrying a backpack stuffed with enough weight to make tectonic plates flinch.
"YOSH! I have only lost consciousness three times today! That is two less than yesterday!" Lee beamed, his teeth shining brighter than a solar flare.
"LEE!" Gai shouted, voice echoing across the jungle. "THAT IS THE FLAME OF YOUTH BURNING IN YOUR SPLEEN!"
"I think that's a hernia, Sensei!"
They were sweating buckets—actual buckets, which Lee had begun collecting and stacking on his back for extra weight. Gai was hauling their ship with chakra threads tied to his waist, occasionally stopping to perform a few thousand squats or offer protein bars to the local monkeys.
You see, the thing about Gai and Lee was: they knew the world was changing. Naruto had the Kyuubi. And the others? They were making dinosaur puppets, reverse-engineering poisons, and wiping out entire species with acupuncture jutsu.
"Sensei…" Lee panted, stopping to catch his breath and adjust the fifty-ton dumbbell hanging from each leg. "Do you think we will ever catch up?"
Gai turned to him with the intensity of a thousand suns. "Lee… listen carefully." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a scroll that looked ancient and possibly cursed.
"This is the legend of the Chakra Tree. Long ago, before abs were invented, there was a tree that drained the world's lifeforce and spat out monsters."
Lee gasped. "You mean… the original overtraining tree?!"
"No, Lee," Gai said solemnly. "Worse. It was a tree that gave birth to chakra… and chaos. The Sage of Six Paths gifted us chakra to fight back. But our bodies? They were never meant to hold this power. That is why we use the Gates."
He slapped a seal on his thigh. The weight suddenly increased, and the riverbed cracked beneath him.
"These seals hold us back—so we can learn to contain the true energy. Chakra is a beast, Lee. It's like trying to hug a lightning bolt while standing in a volcano during a hurricane. Only with training can we survive it."
Lee's eyes widened. "So the Gates… they are the key to becoming like the Sage?"
"Yes. But even I can only maintain one gate constantly." Gai looked upward. "To go beyond… we must suffer."
At that exact moment, a massive reptilian roar echoed through the trees. A dinosaur the size of a fortress charged at them.
Lee stood up. "Permission to sweat blood, Sensei?"
Gai grinned. "Only if you break at least four bones."
Lee activated the Fifth Gate.
He vanished.
The dinosaur exploded into the horizon.
Seconds later, Lee reappeared, missing a shoe, with a wild grin and a T-Rex tooth in his hand.
"Five bones broken, Sensei!"
"SPLENDID!" Gai cried. "Now do it again—but backwards!"
Meanwhile, back at the camp, Sakura sighed and readied her medical kit. "They're going to come back with everything broken again, aren't they?"
Tenten nodded. "I've got the wheelbarrow ready."
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A.n. The characters are stronger than canon because I do believe they were just nerfed and a wasted opportunity. Here, I gave them what they should have learned naturally during the time skip. Naruto in his base form is strong as Jiraiya.